March 30th, 2008 by Brack
Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil Episodes 1 to 3
This show finally surfaced this month after being announced ages ago. Not sure how long Comedy Central have been sitting on these, as the comedy doesn’t feel super topical. But topicality isn’t everything, and this format where two comedians each present a topic to Lewis Black and he must decide which of the two is Evil-er of the two.
And it works pretty well as both a vehicle for Black’s ranting delivery and as a showcase for stand-up comics. And neither have to burn through stage material on TV.
So far the comedians featured have been Paul F. Tompkins (twice), Greg Giraldo (twice), Andy Daly and Andy Kindler. PFT and Daly were particularly good I thought, and Kindler’s use of the taped segment was great.
South Park Season 12 Episodes 1-3
Still good.
Mnemosyne Episode 1
This XEBEC OAV is trying to do be a gorey erotic thriller, but it fails. It has some nice animation, but the plain looking character designs, cheap feeling digital sheen of a lot of the scenes and appalling pacing gives the project the feel of porn creators trying to be taken seriously. You know, like See No Evil.
Utter rubbish, and not even fun rubbish as it takes itself too seriously.
Strait Jacket Episode 1
Talking of plain looking OAVs, this has been licensed for future release by Manga, and it’s a pretty good fit. Guys in magic suits of armour blow up demons. Blow ‘em up real good.
I enjoyed this more than Mnemosyne as it lacks pretension, and when things started blowing up it was fun. However it took a while for that to happen, and the character designs look like they’ve come out of a rubbish Japanese strategy game.
Spectacular Spider-Man Episodes 1-4
This new Spider-Man show has one thing wrong with it - the character designs. Particularly the huge dead pupils in the eyes of most characters. They also suffer a bit from being overly angular, but it’s not as pronounced other recent shows.
If you can overlook the eyes, then there’s a lot to enjoy, both in the writing, that captures the feel of Spider-Man much more than the 90’s series did, and in the animation, which really excels in the action scenes. Fancy Dan spinning his cane during the fight with the Enforcers was the sort of choreography detail that made me sit up and take notice. Yes, the show has the Enforcers. In fact all the villains in these first four episodes are from the first 50 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. The show’s world feels like it’s cherry picked the best aspects of all the different interpretations of Spider-Man. At it’s core is the Ditko/Lee stories, but there’s bits which feel like they’ve come from the 70s comics, as well as setting up things so they can introduce a certain popular villain from the late 80s.
Those eyes though…
Posted in Animation, Anime, Comedy, TV | Tags: andy daly, andy kindler, greg giraldo, lewis black, mnemosyne, paul f. tompkins, root of all evil, south park, spectacular spider-man, strait jacket | No Comments »
